Blue Church | &quot;Raise the Roof&quot; Friendraiser Concert

February 7, 2015

What did we do last night? Oh…not much. We just sat in one of Wheeling’s oldest buildings and listened to three different local artists rock the stage. No big thing.

What is now lovingly being called “The Blue Church” by the Wheeling Young Preservationists & Wheeling National Heritage Area groups is the 1837 Greek Revival Church that has recently been saved from a potential demolition. The two groups of people and several community members did a very crowd source-style raising of funds to pull together enough money to buy the building. And now the real work begins. First up is putting a new roof on the building…and the end goal is to turn this old gal into a community center where more and more events like what happened on Friday night. Last night’s concert was just a taste of what could come to the Friendly City.

Of course, we loved the crowd that was in attendance. Despite being a cold evening in February, the turnout was amazing. It really was.

The talent was even more amazing. I’ve seen two of the three artists play before but I was still blown away by the music we got to hear. In the lineup was Ezra Hamilton, Haley Slagle and Michael Iafrate (who had Sarah Sigmon and Josh Taylor alongside him for a couple of songs). Loved every second of this concert. Louis even enjoyed it, he sat through the whole thing. Well, until he zonked out at the very end. He is four, after all.

We brought out the “I Love Wheeling More Than…” design, this time in koozie form. I even made an extra-special one for Jon-Erik to carry around. Poor Glenn, you just can’t get any respect anymore, can you?

I’m becoming a broken record when I blog about the things we do in Wheeling. But I’ll say it again. It’s super fun to be in this city right now. The excitement about what is happening *now* and what could be happening in the future is…EXCITING. I’m not sure you could go to any other city and find such a mixture of people, talking about their city. Especially in such a positive manner.

The show was fabulous and was actually one of the stops on Downtown Wheeling’s “First Friday” events. As we were walking out to our car, the trolley was outside of The Blue Church, ready to take everyone to the next downtown destination. I have yet to ride the trolley but we’ve participated in plenty of First Fridays so far. Always with Louis, too! Like this event, almost everything during First Fridays is pretty kid friendly.

Surprisingly, I feel like I don’t have a lot to say. I think the pictures can speak for themselves.

In case you need it, here’s a recap:— the music was awesome.— the potential of The Blue Church is inspiring.— Wheeling is boss.— we love the energy of our city.— our friends rock.